Join us at 2:00 pm in the Large Meeting Room for a CL Talk by Kate Freeman on Asteroid Bennu and NASA’s OSIRIS Rex Mission: How stuff from space may have shaped life on Earth. Kate Freeman is a Professor of Geosciences and Chemistry at Penn State University. She develops and applies novel analyses to molecules from ancient life and past environments on Earth. Recently, she joined scientists supporting NASA’s OSIRIS-REX mission to Asteroid Bennu, which successfully delivered rock and dust samples from the asteroid to Earth last fall. These samples provide clues to sources of carbon compounds and the nature of prebiotic chemistry in the early solar system. Bennu has been full of surprises since the spacecraft first encountered it in 2018, and the speaker will share highlights from the mission, so far.
